Field stretchers are known in the art and are used for transporting wounded individuals in the field. They differ from medical stretchers used in medical facilities in that they are designed to be lightweight and compact, enabling the field stretcher to be carried about an individual person and a casualty to be moved by a single person.
Known field stretchers comprise a simple piece of fabric material upon which an injured person may be placed, then the stretcher dragged to a position of safety. Problems with this type of known stretcher exist in that a wounded individual may roll off the stretcher during transport. Also, in many instances, such stretchers are used to recover soldiers or other casualties from mine fields, having been wounded by a land mine. Often in such cases, the causality's legs may have been severely injured or removed, and as such, may have a significantly reduced body length. In such scenarios, known field stretchers are inappropriate since they are too large and again promote the incidence of subjects rolling off the stretcher. The inappropriate length of the know field stretchers in these situations dictates that carry handles are not in the optimum place for safe subject transport.